LAUGHTER IN PRISON.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2580, 15 May 1923, Page 1

LAUGHTER IN PRISON.

SONGS AND STORIES,

ITORATIO BOTTOMLEY A LETHARGIC FIGURE.

Just inside the prison at Wormwood Scrubs, in a garden bed very closely clipped shrubs spell out the motto “Nil Desperandum”—in srtiking contrast with the “Parcere Subjectis” which you read over the stone arch that leads to the great prison on Dartmoor (writes a contributor to the Westminster Gazette).

It is the first cheerful—quite defiantly cheerful —sight which you see when you have passed the heavy iron gates. The chapel, too, is a broad and cheery place into which tlie sun finds its way even on an afternoon in earlv February. SPECIAL HYMNS. From the gallery at the hack where the governor and the organist sit, with a prisoner to blow the organ and a warder to look after him, one felt that even the atmosphere was not without joyousness. The congregation, it is true, was not cheerfully dressed. The colour of the worshippers’ clothes was drab; I lie cut anything but stylish, Second Division men made a solid slab of dark blue in the midst of the khaki. Warders sat or stood in little pews, like witness-boxes, perched above the scrubbed forms on which the prisoners sat. The men sat remarkably still —it was the evening service—with backs at least which betrayed no suspicion of vitality, but with voices which sang the specially chosen hymns with gusto. Two rows of prisoners at the front of the chapel were the choir, and led the singing. It was impossible to grow dismal during the singing of the hymns, if only because the singing was so cheerful, but when the men laughed —in chapel—and clapped their hands, it would have been merely stupid to deny a certain touch of jollit v. MUSIC INSTEAD OF SERMON. To explain the applause it is necessary to add that although the men were engaged in their ordinary Sunday afternoon devotions, there was an unusual substitute for the sermon. Blinded musicians from St. Dunstnn’s had come to sing and [day to the prisoners. The singers and the violinist and the man who recited Kipling’s “If” said that they never confronted a more sympathetic audience. The congregation was touched. During the music they made no sound but as each performer was led back from the centre of the chancel to his place at the side the men applauded like boys at their first t heat re.

Sternly sounded the words of Kipling’s “Tnvictusbut not the refrain of “Devonshire Cream and Cider’’! “Something that you men do not have here!” said the Church Army missioncr, announcing the -ung, and they laughed at that also, although the laugh was against themselves. They laughed loud and long when the missioner told a story. BOTTOMT.EY. Then the congregation became devout again, and soon afterwards the service ended. The prisoners trooped out, among them a short, stout man whom 1 had oh.-mvrd at the hack of the eongieca'ion. almost detached from it, who never applauded, stood or sat with equal lethargy; qneerly selfcontained. inanimate, alone, whose . ves never strayed. He was Horatio Bottomlev.